Buying a Holiday Home in Turkey

Annpan

pickledpink wrote: »

MrsE,





MY picture was on the White Dolphin website!!!!!!!!!!!:p


I'll fish out a picture soon to show you!:D

Toodle pip!:j

Hello PP,
I see your recent holiday has done nothing to improve your demeanour.;)
I was wondering about your photo as there seems to be an imposter on you Avatar now and the dancing cow has gone. There's a most fetching photo of a slim bikini clad girl - can't be you surely?

breadlinebetty

Don't they have the PKK extreme terrorists in Turkey? Something to do with Iraq?

tiff

Whats that got to do with it? Spain has Eta, so?

ajminx

breadlinebetty wrote: »

Don't they have the PKK extreme terrorists in Turkey? Something to do with Iraq?

TURKEY IS A HUGE VAST COUNTRY! DONT THEY HAVE BOMBERS IN LONDON BUT PEOPLE STILL LIVE THERE LOL

sircharles

Flights to Turkey are very expensive this year, and it's too far to pop over for a long weekend when you consider the average journey door to door is about 10 hours!

To add to the woes property in Turkey has fallen through the floor pricewise and crime and corruption in the Turkish property market is rife. Many people have lost thousands (in some cases over £100,000) on buying what they believed to be genuine properties - from seemingly genuine well-established Estate Agents - only to find the property was illegaly built and will need to come down (at your cost too!) or the property was 'stolen' by way of Tapu and sold illegally.

Many people never even get their Deeds for the property, and IF and when they ever do receive them the property has depreciated massively in value. It's become worthless.

rumbaba

Well for those who may have been interested, after extensive research we have decided to DEFINITELY give Turkey a big fat MISS!

We've heard nothing but HORROR stories about buildings which have been so shoddily built that they may aswell have been put together with sellotape.

We've also read stories where people have been ripped off for THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS and not been able to get one penny back. Worse still, the crumbling poorly built properties they've put all their money into have been impossible to sell - and in many cases unscrupulous estate agents have refused to give them the deeds - meaning they don't actually own the place and couldn't sell it if they wanted to!

Someone directed me to a website called Turkish Living Forum and the people on there who have bought are in a terrible state. One person is even having a mental breakdown due to the pressure, and will return to England homeless after losing ALL of his money to these sharks!

It's an outrage the way they're ripped off. They've thrown all their money down the drain! Thank God we did our homework before investing out there. I feel dreadfully sorry for these people's plight.

Thermidor

Rather late in the day to reply to this thread but I didn't want to start a new one when there was so much good advice on here.

I take it, Rumbaba, that you didn't buy out in Turkey, and thank heavens you didn't! One of my neighbours had the misfortune to be swayed by an estate agent to buy a villa in an area called Calis 3 years ago, and has effectively lost all his money!

They bought under duress in my opinion, after leaving their common sense on the aircraft when they landed in Turkey. There's too many reasons to go into as to why they made the biggest mistake of their life investing in a property in Turkey, but they regret it bitterly and wish to God they hadn't been seduced into buying a pile of rubbish.

Their villa is built on swampland and has started to sink at an angle. Cracks have appeared in the walls, they have rising damp, mould and a foul stench coming into the house. On each occasion they've gone over there they have not had one good night's sleep due to the swarms of mosquitoes which live in the swamp of Calis. Nothing can get rid of the mosquitoes, and my neighbour's wife comes back from Turkey bitten to !!!!!!y.

To add insult to injury they cannot acquire the deeds (or Tapu as it is known in Turkey) and so the villa is not effectively theirs! Deeds always seem to be hard to obtain in Turkey! The solicitor dealing with the sale is rumoured to be a crook. The builders of the villas are rumoured to be crooks. And the estate agent is rumoured to be a crook too.

On hindsight they don't know why they bought in Calis in the first place. They say it is flat, ugly, grubby and the beach is narrow and dirty - the whole area looks like a half finished building site with square shaped boxes selling as 'villas'.

They have since found out that they are not the only people to lose all their money. Thousands more have made the same grave mistake they made. All due to the patter of an esate agent while they were high on Gin Slings (or whatever they drink out there) and had a little too much sun on their heads. They say they were sitting ducks and the sharks moved in on them within seconds.

They were given promises that buying a place there would be a great investment - for the estate agents and builders it is! Not for my neighbours though! They will NEVER be able to resell their place - not only is it more or less worthless - but they're not the rightful owners even though they paid for it! And there's nothing they can do about it! And as developers keep on building shedloads of new properties supply outstrips demand by about a whopping 95%. They realise they will never sell this property they paid for, and they have lost all their life savings. It will only devalue in time they have since dscovered - and they hate the darned place! On top of that, they are forced to pay maintenance charges (for what they're not sure - nothing gets done or fixed) and the maintenance company are rumoured to be letting out their villa (without their knowledge) for a large part of the year to young lads working in the local bars and discotheques!

They feel very bitter about losing so much money (not to mention their dreams) and were never told about the pitfalls if, or when, they would ever want to retire out there. They wouldn't be able to, anyway, because in many instances Turkey is now more expensive than the UK to reside in. Petrol, cars, certain foods, meat etc, wine, branded spirits, private health insurance ( a necessity), heating.........are all far more expensive than they are in the UK. And the winters are absolutely freezing (and wet!) so heating is a real issue out there!

If that wasn't all bad enough burglaries are RIFE! Their villa has been burgled twice in the last 9 months - and that's despite them having prison-like bars on their windows!

Calis isn't the only place in Turkey to be inflicted with this nightmare situation - Altinkum, Akbuk, Ovacik, Uzumlu, Fethiye Town have all been subject to crooked builders/estate agents/lawyers etc selling properties to unsuspecting peope which are illegally built, shoddily built with inferior materials, and overpriced to boot! Sometimes they are built on land that doesn't belong to the developer - and a couple of years down the line the authorities come along and order them to be demolished - and for the buyer to pay for it to be demolished!

There are a few forums dedicated to this problem in Turkey, and people are up in arms about it. If you have a google I'm sure you'll find them. Members are talking about marches up to Downing Street - but it isn't actually Gordon Brown's beeswax. I suppose they just don't know what to do. I feel deeply sorry for them. Some ex-pats are desperate to return to the UK but can't. They're penniless and trapped. Nightmare situation! A total disgrace.

breadlinebetty

Steer well clear of Turkey - terrible reputation for rip offs!

rumbaba

Thank you for your concerns and advice. In the end we didn't buy in Turkey, we did lots of homework and realised it was too risky.